As Red Fox has been out with the Forest School holiday club it has been Crazy Owl (Katie), Muddy Mouse (Lucy), Ground Beetle (Tam) and Excited Swan (Sophie) running Den Forest School this week.
We know that children need lots of opportunities to role play and use their imaginations. Role play is important for children to act out real life scenarios, to practice skills and to make sense of what they know. Through role play children can take on a character or role, and use rich language to talk about and act out scenarios. This type of play promotes language for thinking as well as for communicating. The role of the adult is to provide experiences and make real resources available to support this.
So, to follow on from Pancake making during last weeks Forest School, and linking in with Pancake Day this week, we have been role play cooking on a pretend fire within the paddock.
After a quick review of the Forest School rules, we began collecting some natural resources that we could find in the paddock as ‘ingredients’, including leaves, grass, mud and rain water collected in our water-butt. We used some old pots and pans, and our imaginations to create some yummy pancakes and cups of tea!
The children were seen practicing skills that they had seen being performed before – “are you going to flip it? Here’s the spatula”.
There was a lot of discussion and debate about our likes and dislikes regarding our choice of pancake toppings. Also, lots of communicating and negotiating about whose role it was to go and collect the water. Some children took on the role of Red Fox and kept the play going by asking their peers questions ... “right guys who can tell me the rule about the fire? .... yes, well done!”
All of our children were busy and engaged as they collected resources, prepared, mixed then served delicious treats to their friends!
Lucy